This is one way to spend your summer vacation: Vice President Joe Biden, ensconced at a South Carolina resort, was calling old friends and potential allies to discuss the possibilities and problems of jumping into the Democratic presidential race after most pols assumed the field was complete. If he did, what would it mean for him, for Hillary Clinton, for the Democratic Party — and for the Republican opposition. History says he’s likely to run. “Since 1940, only three vice presidents did not either run for president or become president: Alben Barkley, Spiro Agnew and Dick Cheney,” Democratic strategist Peter Penn notes.

Trump: I’ll face Biden in general election after Clinton unravels (The Hill 8/14/15)

GOP presidential front-­‐runner Donald Trump predicts he will face Vice President Biden instead of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election. Trump said on Friday he believes Biden will edge out Clinton once her campaign is undone by the controversy over her use of a private email server while secretary of State, according to Breitbart. “I think so,” Trump said when asked if he can picture a Bight with Biden in next year’s general election. “It just looks like Hillary is going to not be able to run,” he said. “It looks to me like that’s what’s going to happen.

2016 candidates try to connect with voters at Iowa state fair (WKYT 8/14/15)

It is an important rite of passage for the people aiming for the White House. The big destination is the state fair that started this week. The candidates are working to turn this famous event into one big photo op. Over the next 10 days, more than 1 million people will descend on the Iowa State Fair, where they will have a chance to hear from 19 presidential contenders on the official stage known as the “soapbox.”

There’s a fresh face in New Hampshire and his name is John Kasich. The Ohio governor is no political newbie, having Burst made his way into national politics in the early 1980s as a freshman congressman, but he was a late entrant to the 2016 Republican race with limited name recognition and plenty of ground to make up against Jeb Bush, whose establishment lane Kasich has been trying to horn in on.

Donald Trump thinks he would do “very well” in a potential general election against Vice President Joe Biden, as the chatter about a Biden presidential run ratcheted back up this week. “I think I’d match up great. I’m a job producer. I’ve had a great record. I haven’t been involved in plagiarism,” Trump said on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” late on Wednesday. “I think I would match up very well against Biden.”

Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker campaigned in the GOP stronghold of DuPage County on Thursday, offering himself as an experienced alternative to front-­‐ running Donald Trump and others surging because they express voter anger at Washington. Speaking for 20 minutes at the county GOP’s summer reception at a Downers Grove restaurant, Walker also pledged to challenge the Republican establishment overseeing Congress.

The Obama Administration carefully calibrated its final version of the Clean Power Plan to placate the concerns of some major coal producing states, especially in setting deadlines for achieving long-­‐term reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Some states like Kentucky and North Dakota, which heavily rely on coal for power, saw their mandated carbon emissions reduction targets actually jump by as much as 22 percent.

Bernie Sanders has overtaken Hillary Clinton in the first-­‐in-­‐the-­‐nation presidential primary state of New Hampshire, marking his first polling advantage over the former secretary of state of the campaign. The Vermont senator tracks 7 points ahead of Clinton in a new Franklin Pierce University/Boston Herald survey of the Democratic primary there, taking 44 percent to her 37 percent. It polled 442 likely Democratic primary voters in the Granite State last Friday through Monday and has a 4.7 percent margin of error.

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